• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.160-164
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• 2018

In this paper, a wide dynamic range complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor with the adjustable sensitivity by using cascode metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and inverter is proposed. The characteristics of the CMOS image sensor were analyzed through experimental results. The proposed active pixel sensor consists of eight transistors operated under various light intensity conditions. The cascode MOSFET is operated as the constant current source. The current generated from the cascode MOSFET varies with the light intensity. The proposed CMOS image sensor has wide dynamic range under the high illumination owing to logarithmic response to the light intensity. In the proposed active pixel sensor, a CMOS inverter is added. The role of the CMOS inverter is to determine either the conventional mode or the wide dynamic range mode. The cascode MOSFET let the current flow the current if the CMOS inverter is turned on. The number of pixels is $140(H){\times}180(V)$ and the CMOS image sensor architecture is composed of a pixel array, multiplexer (MUX), shift registers, and biasing circuits. The sensor was fabricated using $0.35{\mu}m$ 2-poly 4-metal CMOS standard process.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.82-88
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• 2020

In this paper, we propose a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) binary image sensor with a gate/body-tied (GBT) p-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (PMOSFET)-type photodetector using a double-tail comparator for high-speed and low-power operations. The GBT photodetector is based on a PMOSFET tied with a floating gate (n+ polysilicon) and a body that amplifies the photocurrent generated by incident light. A double-tail comparator compares an input signal with a reference voltage and returns the output signal as either 0 or 1. The signal processing speed and power consumption of a double-tail comparator are superior over those of conventional comparator. Further, the use of a double-sampling circuit reduces the standard deviation of the output voltages. Therefore, the proposed CMOS binary image sensor using a double-tail comparator might have advantages, such as low power consumption and high signal processing speed. The proposed CMOS binary image sensor is designed and simulated using the standard 0.18 ㎛ CMOS process.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.97-102
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• 2016

Image stitching is a process of combining two or more images with overlapping area to create a panorama of input images, which is considered as an active research area in computer vision, especially in the field of augmented reality with 360 degree images. Image stitching techniques can be categorized into two general approaches: direct and feature based techniques. Direct techniques compare all the pixel intensities of the images with each other, while feature based approaches aim to determine a relationship between the images through distinct features extracted from the images. This paper proposes a novel image stitching method based on feature pixels with approximated clustering filter. When the features are extracted from input images, we calculate a meaning of the minutiae, and apply an effective feature extraction algorithm to improve the processing time. With the evaluation of the results, the proposed method is corresponding accurate and effective, compared to the previous approaches.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.27-32
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• 2016

A new lane detection algorithm is proposed for the analysis of DNA fingerprints from a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) gel electrophoresis image. Although several research results have been previously reported, it is still challenging to extract lanes precisely from images having abrupt background brightness difference and bent lanes. We propose an edge based algorithm for calculating the average lane width and lane cycle. Our method adopts sub-pixel algorithm for extracting rising-edges and falling edges precisely and estimates the lane width and cycle by using k-means clustering algorithm. To handle the curved lanes, we partition the gel image into small portions, and track the lane centers in each partitioned image. 32 gel images including 534 lanes are used to evaluate the performance of our method. Experimental results show that our method is robust to images having background difference and bent lanes without any preprocessing.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.61-65
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• 2021

In this study, we propose a 2500 frame per second (fps) high-speed binary complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor using a gate/body-tied (GBT) p-channel metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor-type high-speed photodetector. The GBT photodetector generates a photocurrent that is several hundred times larger than that of a conventional N+/P-substrate photodetector. By implementing an additional binary operation for the GBT photodetector with such high-sensitivity characteristics, a high-speed operation of approximately 2500 fps was confirmed through the output image. The circuit for binary operation was designed with a comparator and 1-bit memory. Therefore, the proposed binary CMOS image sensor does not require an additional analog-to-digital converter (ADC). The proposed 2500 fps high-speed operation binary CMOS image sensor was fabricated and measured using standard CMOS process.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.35-39
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• 2016

Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL) is the most promising technique in the field of Next Generation Lithography (NGL) expected to be used in the 1x-nm node for High Volume Manufacturing (HVM). But there exits remaining challenges for proper defect control of EUV mask. It was considered development of EUV pellicle for protecting the EUV mask has many obstacles due to high extinction coefficient of EUV wavelength. Recently researchers in the industry of semiconductor argue about the necessity of EUV pellicle and make effort to achieve it. In this paper, we investigated that the relationship between imaging performance and transmittance of EUV pellicle quantitatively. We made in-house EUV pellicle and analyzed its imaging performance of the dependence of pellicle transmittance using Coherent Scattering Microscopy(CSM). The imaging performance of EUV mask with pellicle is affected by its transmittance and we found that the performance of EUV mask improved with higher transmittance pellicle.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.101-107
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• 2021

In this paper, a study of the design of automotive communication lamps using microlens arrays (MLAs) was conducted. With the development of autonomous driving technology, automobiles need communication lamps to communicate with pedestrians. To reduce the size of the optical system and secure high light intensity, the communication lamp's optical system was designed using an MLA. In addition, to secure a clear image on inclined ground, the design was carried out considering the overlap method. After that, the improved performance was confirmed by comparing it to the MLA optical system before overlapping.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.95-100
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• 2009

This paper presents an efficient disparity matching, using sum of absolute difference (SAD) and dynamic programming (DP) algorithm. This algorithm makes use of one of area-based algorithm which is the absolute sum of the pixel difference corresponding to the window size. We use the information of the right eye brightness (B) and the left eye brightness to get an best matching results and apply the results to the left eye image using the window go by the brightness of the right eye image. This is that we can control the brightness. The major feature of this algorithm called SAD+DP+B is that although Root Mean Square (RMS) performance is slightly less than SAD+DP, due to comparing original image, its visual performance is increased drastically for matching the disparity map on account of its matching compared to SAD+DP. The simulation results demonstrate that the visual performance can be increased and the RMS is competitive with or slightly higher than SAD+DP.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.95-100
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• 2011

This paper proposes a new method of vehicle brake lights detection and recognition using an R-filtering. Firstly, the proposed method processes the R-filtering with the first input image and then with the second one in order to detect brake lights. Secondly, the method counts the number of red pixels and computes the mean value in each R-filtered image. The difference rates between the numbers of the red pixels and between the mean values of two images are defined in this paper. Through the analysis of the difference rates, it can recognize whether brake lights are turned on or off, and whether the vehicle ahead is being approached or not. The proposed method is implemented using C language in an embedded Linux system for a high-speed real-time image processing. Experiment results show that the proposed algorithm is quite successful.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.6 no.1 s.18
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• pp.49-52
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• 2007

The recent advances in digital imaging and computing technology have resulted in a rapid accumulation of digital media in the personal computing and entertainment industry. In addition, large collections of such data already exist in many scientific application domains such as the geographic information systems (GIS), digital library, trademark imaging, satellite imaging and medical imaging. Thus, the need for content-based retrieval from visual media, such as image and video data, is ever increasing rapidly in many applications.